The Greatest Tower Defense Games on Earth

Don’t settle for just any tower defense game; get involved with Kingdom Rush, a unique and brilliantly original game that takes the genre, covers it in fantasy and injects a dose of 100% style with its cartoon visuals and easy-going tone making it a contender for the world’s best tower defense game.

Tower defense is a difficult genre to take on, with many titles failing to please by quite a long way. This isn’t the case with Incursion 2, which improves on the original by giving us more control than ever over our archers, soldiers, sorcerers, and central hero in our attempts to save the kingdom.

Just as the act of reaching for a Penguin when peckish, if I’m in the mood for an excellence in tower defense and am hungry for a game that both typifies and leads the genre by a long way, then I’m going to reach for Kingdom Rush. A title that put Ironhide Games on the map, Kingdom Rush has received wide critical acclaim as well as a loyal following of millions of fans across the world. The announcement of the sequel to the game, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers, was unsurprisingly met with a reaction that could be mistaken for that of the population of Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945, in terms of extremity, anyhow. Anticipation for the game grows with the passing of every day and manifests mainly in the form of speculation that tends to float about on the internet. Since the game was supposed to have dropped at the beginning of spring, but this season sprung over a month ago and there is still no sign of it. This means that its release is nearly upon us, so here are a few features that we can expect to see in the game.

We would all be lying to ourselves if we were to claim the original Kingdom Rush was anything less than a game of epic proportions, requiring some well-thought-out strategy, a patient temperament and possessing so many cool features that it is surprising that they squeezed quite so much greatness into one game. With Kingdom Rush: Frontiers on the way (tipped to be in Spring, but the flowers are blooming and I still don’t see the title sitting anywhere on the internet),there is yet more good news for fans in the form of Kingdom Rush’s new campaign ‘The Curse of Castle Blackburn’ being greenlighted by Steam. Reactions on the ridiculous web of opinions that is the internet range from fairly restrained to absolute, unbridled joy and elation, often expressed solely with caps lock firmly stuck in the ‘on’ position. I’ll go ahead and say that the excitement has even gotten to me a little, and my heart is usually impervious to these kinds of emotions on account of the fact that it is made out of stone so cold that the Necromancer towers that will feature in Kingdom Rush: Frontiers would have a hard time reviving it. Let’s rejoice at the sequel reference, but not until we discuss the possibilities that could feature in this steam-based sequel .

Games are simply too polite these days. They take your hand and walk you through step-by-step tutorial with softly-worded guidance notes, patting you on the back for getting to grips with the fact that the forwards arrow makes you walk in a forwards direction and practically hi-fiving you for learning how to open doors. I never got a certificate and a rosette for learning how to walk, so why should games treat you like you’d forget to continue breathing if it didn’t tell you which button controls the contracting and relaxing of your diaphragm? Hex Empire doesn’t have time for all this molly coddling: the act of merely quitting the game to go grab a cup of tea is met with the provokingly condescending message of “It’s too hard for you, isn’t it?”, mocking your attempted capitulation as if it doesn’t even need you to play it to know that it is brilliant. This inherent confidence in the game’s capacity to challenge you is exactly why we need a sequel, the possible features of which I wouldn’t mind putting forward below, if only as an exercise in basic listology.

There’s nothing quite like the simulated representation of humans through stick figures, is there? Stick-based people are less taxing on your graphics card, they’re so much easier to draw, and because they aren’t quite the full corporeal embodiment of humans, it is easier to sacrifice hundreds of them in an all-out war for the purposes of our entertainment and flash-based gratification. Stick War 2: Order Empire is part tower defense, part real-time strategy, but all action and bloodshed for the purpose of taking back what rightfully belongs to your stick fellows in the first place. As entertaining as the game is, however, there is always room for improvement, and what better place to muse about a future sequel than the internet? The following ideas may be flawed, but unlike 95% of content on the internet, they are written in comprehensible, grammatically-sound English, which should be a refreshing change to the WWW norm.

Other Platforms

If you thought Kingdom Rush was going to take a bow and leave the stage for good after its initial run of unbelievable success then I worry for your sanity and your skills of reasoning, since Kingdom Rush was always going to return, and return it has in the form of Kingdom Rush: Frontiers HD. A game that takes the original and builds upon its greatness, Frontiers is a game that the genre can be proud of, and one that will put it on the map as one of the best genres to have ever existed.

I know, I know: no one likes to be led to a website with false promises of sequels only to be met with nothing but talk, or even worse, an embedded game that the website claims to be a sequel but is actually nothing but an old version of the game. My intention here is not to mislead or fool, however, but simply to briefly discuss some features that us fans of Kingdom Rush: Frontiers are simply dying to see in a sequel. No, it isn’t as good as the real thing, but since the real thing is likely a long way into the future at this point (particularly if you consider that the next Kingdom Rush release is The Curse of Castle Blackburn) and ideas about Kingdom Rush Frontiers 2 haven’t even begun to enter Ironhide’s realms of thought yet, the only thing that we have at our disposal is the power of speculation and all the excitement that it brings, so may you continue if you enjoy some forward thinking or check out our other tower defense games if you aren’t too impressed by the speculative practices below.

Guides

In deciding to play Kingdom Rush: Frontiers, you have already made what is likely to be the best decision of your life. Marriage? Sure, that’s cute, I’m sure you’ll be very happy. Getting a job? Pretty useful; will help you pay for the expensive wedding. Realising that reading through the physics behind the big bang theory written by an 80-year-old, grey-moustached professor is funnier and more entertaining than The Big Bang Theory to an infinite degree? Now we’re getting somewhere, but discovering a love for Kingdom Rush: Frontiers? Now that is a smart move that will bring you joy, necromancer towers and happiness for hours, my friend. Thanks to this game, the tower defense genre has something to be truly proud about, and even sceptics will come to realise that placing multiple towers of different type on the perimeter of a path to quash enemy invasion can be challenging, amusing and visually stunning all at once. If you’re finding it all a little too challenging, however, take a look at this wee guide and see if it can remedy the situation for you.

Not familiar with Incursion? This little gem of a series consists of two games that are firmly and stylishly sitting within the tower defense genre, a style of game that has you defending a predetermined position (or multiple positions) on a map by placing automatically-activated towers of various types across the map. Tower defense is a staggeringly popular genre, not least because of its potential for innovation from developers; it's a fertile ground for ideas to flourish because it's such a simple yet accessible concept. Some popular tower defense series that you'd have to be living in the Mariana Trench not to have heard of are the sublime Kingdom Rush, Bloons Tower Defense, and Cursed Treasure. Incursion is another wildly popular series whose second title has been out for a good while now. Here are a few ideas and thoughts on the potential sequel, Incursion 3.